A `Boom` Album For Hall, Oates

January 12, 1985|By Frank Spotnitz, United Press International.

NEW YORK — Daryl Hall and John Oates, whose ``Big Bam Boom`` album is firmly entrenched in the Top 10, see themselves at the center of the rock music universe and as the logical next step in the evolution of popular music.

If one accepts their immodest interpretation of things, Hall and Oates are successful because they have combined the pulsing dance beat of late `70s disco with the attitude and style of New Wave music.

``The problem with disco is that the idea of the groove was right, but the mentality and the attitude of disco was so superficial and so off the wall that no one cared,`` Oates explained recently.

The punk and New Wave movements were ``chockful of attitude and stance without much substance,`` he said. ``And what happened was, luckily, people began to pick and choose the best elements of these two offshoots, the groove of disco as it applied to the attitude of New Wave-punk.

``And all of a sudden you came up with what we have now. It seems to be a good combination.``

The combination has earned Hall and Oates a string of No. 1 hits, beginning with ``Kiss on My List`` from their first self-produced album, 1980`s ``Voices,`` to ``Out of Touch`` from the bouncy new ``Big Bam Boom``

LP.

IN TELEPHONE interviews from tour stops in Arizona recently, Hall and Oates, both 35, discussed how the two friends from Philadelphia survived unfair management, indifferent production and hit records they didn`t like to become major stars.

And they discussed why they will be parting company temporarily after the tour winds down to pursue solo projects.

Their travails are detailed in a new authorized biography, ``Dangerous Dances,`` that is purposely vague about how the pair got out of what they considered an unfair contract with manager John Madar in 1972.

The book implies Hall and Oates drew a gun on Madar to force him to release them.

Hall would not clarify the implication, saying, ``Certain things have happened that if we had left them in the book, we would have been up for a lawsuit, so we just left it alone.``

Three years later, Hall and Oates were signed to RCA and had their first hit in ``Sara Smile,`` which reached No. 4. In 1976, the pair topped the charts with ``Rich Girl.`` The only problem was, neither of them liked the music.

``It was very frightening that we would be known for something we couldn`t stand behind and feel proud of,`` Oates said. ``I`m not casting aspersions on the songs themselves because they were good. But they didn`t come out right.``

ALTHOUGH HALL and Oates stood on the brink of real stardom, they had never been more frustrated.

``We were locked into this California studio machine. . . . We were working with producers that we didn`t feel were making our music come out the way we wanted to,`` Hall said.

Hall then went into the studio with producer Robert Fripp to make an excellent solo album, ``Sacred Songs,`` that RCA considered so commercially risky it refused to release it until 1980.

By then, Hall and Oates had been through a string of more unsatisfying albums and finally released the ``Voices`` LP, which was the first they produced.

The pop confections they have made in the last four years, ``You Make My Dreams,`` ``Did It in a Minute,`` ``I Can`t Go for That,`` ``Adult

Education,`` ``Say It Isn`t So,`` have made them the most successful partnership in rock history.

When Hall and Oates began producing, the songwriting became freer, the sound was more what they had in their hearts and the musicians in the studio were people they felt comfortable with.

For ``Big Bam Boom,`` Hall and Oates came to the studio with ``germs of ideas`` for songs that they would develop with the help of studio wizards Arthur Baker and Bob Clearmountain.

BAKER HAS mixed dance versions of hits by Cyndi Lauper and Bruce Springsteen, among others.

``Instead of making the record and then giving it to Arthur, we decided to integrate the process, have Arthur involved in the process from the begining,`` Oates said. ``That way the songs would evolve, and we would not have to remix the record.``

Although the strategy has paid off, Hall said he plans to make another solo record after the tour ends ``just to break the patterns. I think John and I feel it`s time to expand beyond our normal routine.``

Oates emphasized the split will be only temporary. ``Anything we do separately can only help what we do together,`` he said.

``We`re not thinking about breaking up. It has to do with expanding ourselves, so when we come back together we`ll be refreshed.``